September 4, 2009

Listen a few times and let it sink in. Here's the whole context, which begins with Olopade saying that it might have been better to argue for health care reform on a moral rather than an economic ground.

If you take the time to watch all this, you'll see that every time I pressure her about the nature of the moral argument, she shifts over to an economic argument. I point out the shift when it happens 3 times and say that I think the way she keeps going back to economics may well explain why the Democrats chose not to give prominence to the moral argument. In particular, as Conn Carroll's clip shows, the moral argument — when you get right down to it and strip away the verbiage — is hard left ideology.

71 comments:

It seems like the moral argument would be destined to fail for the simple fact that even if you do a moral thing, you get no moral credit if that thing was compelled upon you in the first place. The compulsion renders it an amoral. It turns acts of morality into acts of simple duty.

In other words, if you freely give of yourself to help another, that's clearly a moral act.

If someone is forcing you to give to another, that's not clearly a moral act even if you would have done it anyways.

Once again, the only morality issue for Dayo's crowd is that they don't have your money yet. They never recognise any other morality perspective. Her call that elected monetary equality rights IS the only morality is what Joe The Plumber spotted so easily. IMO the reason that the rest of us don't call Obama out on it comes from the sincere desire to uplift once oppressed black people. That sincere desire is being used to make robbing honest working people look like a Morality Requirement. This delusion needs to be stopped ASAP.

The moral argument can only get so far as saying there should be health care reform.

It cannot, and does not, argue for this particular bill. Indeed, the moral argument can be used against this particular health care bill given the state of the economy and the blatant corruption allowed in the current congress.

Why this bill? That's the key question, and the one no one is answering to people's satisfaction.

SK – Does choosing to define an act as moral, before the act, not make it moral to that individual?

TG – “They never recognize any other morality perspective” That’s true of any moralality perspective, is it not? As in answering, “We don't trust our government to act in our best interests because they don't have our best interests at heart,” with we don't trust insurance companies to act in our best interests because they don't have our best interests at heart. I mean, which is better? It’s about a moral perspective, right?

It's very disappointing to see someone like Dayo, who is clearly very bright, so trapped by that failed ideology. She just seem too smart to really believe that stuff.

I predict she will become a conservative someday, if she can muster the courage. It is no small challenge for a black woman to do so. In fact who are the black female conservatives? That is one lonely bridge game, so maybe she won't. Too bad, she could be an amazing conservative.

why do thse people never ask themslves WHY health care is so expensive in the first place, and why it has gotten moreso over the decades? Do they think health care expenses are like the tides, completely out of our control? Does it occur to them that health care is expensive because of various *government* interventions and omissions (failure to provide tort reform)?

I was quite impressed with Ann. She really said exactly what is not understood by the left: That Americans don't have a "station" - we have potential and opportunities and freedom, that we don't just value over security, but that we see as a path to it.

She can't make the moral argument because even having affordable insurance will not inure people from medical burdens. Different people will suffer under the new system, but people will still suffer.

As far as people doing contract work, I say, go get a job with insurance! Move if you have to! I worked for the State because I would get insurance. My sister, a lawyer, got a job as an AG so she could get insurance and her lawyer husband could remain self-employed.

Yes. She said "And so, when you can't think of yourself as part of a collective that might benefit, you're not going to respond to a moral case."

She thinks the moral argument would be a good one, but she concedes that we need to first get people to see themselves as part of a collective. This is an old, old lefty argument, and it needs to be understood.

Olopade is really impressively smart and articulate but at the same time, an idiot. She's stuck on the idea that if we average Americans really understood how very, very rich some people are -- the true extent of income inequality in America -- then we would want government-run universal health care.

The condescension is palpable. She repeated, a few times, that if we understood that we would be the beneficiaries, we'd support the program. She doesn't understand that this particular program will create far more problems than it will solve.

It's also insulting when Olopade says that individuals don't understand their own economic status. We do, just not the way she wants us to. She's focused on relative wealth or income, and we're focused on paying the bills and saving for retirement, kids' college, vacations and Christmas shopping. It's irrelevant to me how much money other people make, it's not as if they're preventing me from earning more.

Two observations, at least: 1. Ms Olopade's face fills her side of the screen whereas you're sitting back and seem much less prominent in your screen. 2. You ploy of interrupting Ms Opolade and then demurring back to her with your apology for interrupting her was fabulous; excellent technique.

However, Professor, you let her dominate the conservation such that I saw when I felt you could have been more assertive and less submissive.

...we need to first get people to see themselves as part of a collective.

And you have to be very careful how that collective is defined. Loose talk about health care as a "human right" would lead to redistribution of America's wealth throughout the world, instead of just to Obama's constituency. Very bad for his chances in 2012. Obama needs to emphasize that only Americans have a moral right to health care.

AJ said...Food, clothes [nah I think she said these are commodities], housing, cell phone & internet servise, a computer, free cable TV, free day care for the kids, public schools, free mass transit?

Those are all "rights"

Clearly, because the argument is for us to begin subsidizing people in the 70k income range who now forgo health insurance to buy the market basket you proffer. Now talking like an econ geek, Each item in that market basket must have great utility (e.g value) to the purchaser than health care, because they choose those things first, then whine about not being able to afford healthcare.

its all about the choices you make.

want FREE good quality health care above all, for you and your family? Join the Army :)

Indeed, the argument made here by Dayo is haggard and antiquated, yet, somehow, Dayo suggests that she has somehow stumbled across something new - it is she who has had this epiphany. Likewise, as other commentators have aptly pointed out, the condescension in her voice is, frankly, naseuating - that it is only the left who truly understand what we, the poor, un-informed, incapable of understanding, rank and file actually need. It is sickening and, I wager, should the left continue to beat the proverbial drum which they are currently, they will have their "COLLECTIVE" asses handed to them.

Prof. A has zeroed in on a real weakness of the current reformers-- their schizophrenic attitude towrds the uninsured. In the sales pitch for the reform plan, it's "we've got to do something to help the uninsured, those poor victims", but in the actual design of the plan, it's "we've got to do something to rope in the uninsured, those freeloading bastards". We opponents ought to be doing more to exploit this.

I don't think she is married to the morality argument. It's like "support it because it's the moral thing to do" or "support it because you will benefit" or "support it because I'm smart and you're a dumb ass". It really doesn't matter which one you choose. Only that you choose one.

At the same time, in other arguments, it's somehow bad, from a conservative perspective when too many people want to maximize their individual rights. It's the classic conservative complaint about the problem of "special interests".

K*thy...The moral perspectives we see as justice are in the traditional legal systems of the world. None of those legal systems say that theft of another's property is moral. Even Marxism posits that they are merely stealing back stolen property from the Worker's work taken as rents due to a conquest years ago creating property ownership in the conquering group. The collectivist group then refuses to believe anyone ever has had a right to own private property that the collective cannot steal back. You might want to study the Inheritance/Estate Tax morality questions for a quick insight.

Ann Althouse: I think most Americans, I think wouldn't accept the idea that they have a station in life, as opposed to that they are participants in a free market where they take responsibility for themselves and they can become successful if they work and they can bargin for better positions and so forth...

Olopade argues that health is not a commodity like food or clothing. She's absolutely right. And if we were debating univeral health, that might be relavent. However, we are debating universal healhcare, and healthcare is a commodity.

From Wikipedia: "A commodity is some good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is a product that is the same no matter who produces it, such as petroleum, notebook paper, or milk.[1] In other words, copper is copper. The price of copper is universal, and fluctuates daily based on global supply and demand. Stereos, on the other hand, have many levels of quality. And, the better a stereo is [perceived to be], the more it will cost."

Sounds like healthcare is not a commodity now, but the President wants to make it one.

Didn't we get lectured ad nauseum during the Clinton Impeachment that "morality has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with being an effective leader"?Oops sorry, didn't mptice the change of scenery.

It boggles the mind that the same crowd for 35 years has screamed about the "right to privacy", and sloganeered "keep your laws off of my body", now wants to in part turn over your health care to the IRS.

If I understand Dayo, she said $70,000 income earners are "the least among us" and cannot afford health insurance.

I think most people earning $70,000 would disagree. I would bet the vast majority already have health insurance and are disinclined to foot the bill for similar earners who elect to spend their money on other goods.

Dayo may base her arguments on economic grounds, but I think she has a poor grasp of the discipline.

Sorry to beat the same drum again for the nth time, but I didn't watch the entire debate yet.

I just have to ask...if someone is making a health care a right doesn't she have to identify who has that right?

An actual example; my blushing bride is now seven months pregnant with our third child. Both my wife and my unborn son receive health care and we pay for it. Is the moral right to health care only my wife's and not my son's because he has the unfortunate disability of being unborn? That would seem awkward as he, as fetus, has received health care since we found out we were expecting.

So...assuming that Dayo is a pro-choice lib (betting good money on that)...she would say that the health care my wife gets is a right, but the health care my son receives is only given to him by my wife's choice?

I wonder what color the sky is in her world; in the world of anyone that claims health care is a moral right without explaining how the unborn fit into that.

For those who don't think there's a moral argument for universal health care, I'd be interested to hear your views on what should be done about an indigent gunshot victim who shows up at an emergency room.

what the left does not understand in all their hand wringing over income or wealth inequality is that the economy is not a zero sum game. Bill Gates (or Warren Buffet, or Geo. Soros) getting richer than Midas did NOT take a penny out of my pocket ... in sum it probably enriched many others far more than it enriched them.

Her attitude is classic left --"if only average Americans understood that they weren't wealthy they'd vote with us." They can't conceive that people either are not inherently selfish or, if they are, are also aspirational. Either way, they don't vote like they're "supposed to" based on current self-interest. I suspect it's why the tax structure that's been tossed around by the administration would end up with less than 1/2 of Americans paying taxes--they're trying to find the tipping point where current self interest trumps aspiration.

I'd be interested to hear your views on what should be done about an indigent gunshot victim who shows up at an emergency room.

Medicaid already covers that situation.

Now, I can't afford to buy a handgun right now, so can someone tell me what federal office to call so I can get my free, tax-payer provided firearm, cause I have right to bear arms, and if I can't afford it, then gosh darn it, the government MUST provide it.

@AF, who said: "For those who don't think there's a moral argument for universal health care, I'd be interested to hear your views on what should be done about an indigent gunshot victim who shows up at an emergency room."

AF you seriously cannot be so uninformed as to ask this question.

What do you think happens to such a person today? I'll tell you. They are treated, without respect to payment, just as the law requires.

You've fallen into the Democrat Party trap of confusing health care with health insurance.

They want to reform insurance; because the poor aren't buying it. They want to force the poor to buy it to lower costs for themselves.

They can't say it that way because then the cat would be out of the bag on just what scumbags they are. So instead, they couch the debate in deliberately wrong terms. They say it's about "health care reform."

It's not about health care reform. If Barack Obama wanted to provide some health care to people he would propose building some hospitals. But he hasn't. All he's proposed is to force people who do not want to buy insurance to do so anyway - with the IRS backing up the threat.

The person who shows up to a hospital should be treated. And as a society, we have already ensured that they will be. It is, today, against the law NOT to treat such a person already.

Americans also provide hundreds of free clinics and charity hospitals around the United States where anyone, regardless of their status, can receive health care.

That system works.

Democrats want to change the health insurance system to FORCE poor people to buy expensive insurance that they currently choose not to buy. It's nothing more than a tax increase in disguise - breaking Obama's promise not to raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000 a year.

For those who don't think there's a moral argument for universal health care, I'd be interested to hear your views on what should be done about an indigent gunshot victim who shows up at an emergency room.

You are confusing Health Care with Health Insurance.

Even illegal aliens are entitled to Health CARE. They are not entitled to government subsidized Health INSURANCE.

Don't most if not all legal rights involve a freedom from the trespasses of others?

As in no one can infringe on my right to speak, worship, vote, travel, assemble, etc.

Do they ever include the right to get things from others?

You have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers, which is a positive right, in that the government must provide it. You have a right to an attorney, which has been interpreted as a positive right at least since Miranda, but I don't know if it has always been interpreted as such.

I would consider these special cases, where the government must supply them to you because the government is using it's power to force you into the legal system. Thus they are there to limit the government's ability to abuse you.

I think the right to healthcare is a perfect example of the ninth amendment's unenumerated rights.

You have a right to healthcare in the same way that you have the right to bear arms. You have the right to purchase healthcare, and the government may not pass laws to prevent that. However, the government does not have an obligation to pay for your healthcare, anymore than it has an obligation to pay for your guns.

AF said... "For those who don't think there's a moral argument for universal health care, I'd be interested to hear your views on what should be done about an indigent gunshot victim who shows up at an emergency room."

I don't think you'll find many in this residually-Christian culture against the idea that people should be helped in extremis regardless of ability to pay. Once the context is widened from emergency situations to everyday life issues, you won't find that same consensus anymore.

The people being asked to believe that their neighbors cannot, with $70K/year income, afford to insure themselves against catastrophe are frequently in that same income bracket themselves. If I forgo the new car, the dining out, the cable TV and high-speed internet, the manicures and designer clothes, etc., in order to take care of necessities, I'm darn well going to expect you to do likewise if you hit me up to cover your necessities.

The essential question is whether the statement "health care is a right" implies something like a right to free speech, or a right to free beer. The left is clearly on the free-beer side of interpretation. So much of Dayo's argument is high-minded envy: that because some people have too much they should therefore be penalized.

Progressive taxation to pay for societal need is hardly controversial. What is, is our ability to define and bound the need. When medicine was mostly palliative care, the Christian imperative to care for the sick was bounded by ability. Mortality was expected and accepted. The religious orders who created and ran hospitals did the spiritual works of mercy right alongside the corporal works of mercy, and so cared for the whole person. Now that medicine includes a boundless variety of expensive treatments, the temptation to rank utilitarianism is overwhelming.

The only way out of the utilitarian trap (penalizing "useless eaters" and so forth) is a re-insistence upon the inherent dignity and telos of each human person. Spiritual works of mercy, not just corporal. The health care consumer must be considered a moral agent with duties as well as rights: the duty to be self-reliant insofar as able, the duty not to seek care vainly or frivolously, and the duty not to demand others act against their own ethics in providing (so-called) care.

Did she really make an argument that people don't understand how rich some other people are?

As in, I can afford an education (with debt, but still), clothing, a nice house, health insurance, cable TV, internet, heat, food, etc., and I should be sad about it because the Bushes can afford nicer things than me?

I thank God every night that I am so blessed to live in this country in this time that the things that I want for are so superfluous as to be, compared to any other point in human history, absurd. The fact that someone else has more is not a problem to me.

The Democrats when they wear their best face are protectors of the poor and most vulnerable in our society. The Republicans likewise wish to be the protectors of the most productive members of our society. I have some problems with the Democrats adopting a protector of the downtrodden pose in this debate. Tort lawyers and per diem programmers are individually very worthy members of the human race but collectively they do not pull on the heart strings....On the Republican side, I have similar objections to insurance executives. They make large sums of money not on producing a better product but on their ability to lobby state legislators and screw participating doctors and patients. The founders of some of these insurance companies have taken home a large capital gains payday based not on the quality of their product but on the quality of their packaging of the product. One insurance company reported huge profits. Their secret: they made the doctors wait six months for reimbursement of claims. The founding genius took the company public and realized a huge capital gain on this insight into the health care industry.

There is, however, a moral component to this argument that has been neglected. Many of us have elderly relatives in the early stages of senile dementia. This disease is manifested by the patient's wish to go on expensive cruises and buy second homes in Florida rather than participating in the expense of their grandchildren's education. Many of us have had to face heartbreaking decisions when our dearest relations suffer from this disease. Some worried children adopt the procedure commonly known as the Wisconsin pillow drop. This back alley procedure is barbarous. Many well meaning children suffer facial scratches, and some have even had their fingers bitten off. End of life counselling is not something that should be attempted by any amateur, however well meaning.....Under Obamacare, Enhanced End of Life Counselling will be administered under safe, sanity conditions with no conceivable risk to the bereaved chilren.....Will there be rationing? No, but there will be a need to prioritize the most needy patients. Those who have shown that they voted Democratic in the last two presidential elections will receive more consideration. Such people are more likely to use their inheritance to buy a Prius and weatherproof their homes. The environment is very much a consideration in this program.

Dayo argues that if her employer did not have to pay for her health insurance, she would get that money.She may, but wouldn't she have to turn around and spend it again on health insurance? Or pay it in taxes to pay for her health insurance?

How will her health care/insurance be paid for if nobody is paying for it?

Wow! Olapade's condescension (how could you be so polite when she sneeringly interrupted you and assumed the right to speak most of the time?) is matched only by her grad student superficiality and cant. Time for her to get a real job. Of course, to be honest, I can remember speaking in similarly foolish ways 20 years ago when I was an undergrad.

Wow! Olapade's condescension (how could you be so polite when she sneeringly interrupted you and assumed the right to speak most of the time?) is matched only by her grad student superficiality and cant. Time for her to get a real job. Of course, to be honest, I can remember speaking in similarly foolish ways 20 years ago when I was an undergrad.

Wow! Olapade's condescension (how could you be so polite when she sneeringly interrupted you and assumed the right to speak most of the time?) is matched only by her grad student superficiality and cant. Time for her to get a real job. Of course, to be honest, I can remember speaking in similarly foolish ways 20 years ago when I was an undergrad.

In any case, Rahm Emmanuel is wrong about his awaited consensus. Whichever crisis happens first, either will damage the real old consensus beyond easy repair. The undeclared truce between the Left and the Right, their tacit albeit uneasy coexistence these last forty years has been upset by a power grab.

2 things (well, 2.5)1. I've said the same thing about the BoR & Guns before: if Health Care is a "Right" that the government must provide (and by forcibly extracting money from me and by requiring me to have it), then where are my free guns provided by the government? Sure, they won't shoot straight & probably I'll get bullets of a different calibre, but I want my free guns!. (And h/t to Dogwood whose brilliance in philosophy is apparent because he agrees with me.)2. You can Google the actual profits for insurance companies. Go ahead -- use Google Finance. Average net profit is around 2% or so. Now Google profits for high tech companies. Much higher, eh? Why not complain that Google and Microsoft are bloodsucking corporate thieves that deserve to be "reformed"? Oh wait, they're the good guys.

I watched a good bit more than the 8 second clip. But when Olopade said, "I disagree that people (a) have an influence and (b) know what's going on . . ." which is why it is only "fitting" that Obama will address Congress about health care rather than the American people . . .